Must Have Dozed Off
by SunbeamsAndSomeBeans
Summary: After his second divorce, and unceremonious firing from Air England, Douglas is coping magnificently. Content warning for alcoholism. X-posted from AO3.


The first thing you do, upon waking up, is to determine what time you "dozed off".  
You still use that particular phrase. You probably always will, for as long as you last. There's no-one around to excuse yourself to, but it holds some comfort, some vague recollection of a time when you genuinely could still tell yourself, with some degree of confidence, that everyone awoke from simply dozing off with rattling joints and a cold, damp sheen of sweat at their hairline.  
It wasn't as bad back then. You'd wake up on the sofa, television still quietly murmuring away in front of you, or, if you really overdid it, attacking you with garish colours and overly cheery hosts. A glass, perhaps with a significant amount of whiskey left in it, would be right where you left it, within reach. And you would reach for it, pausing to observe little jitters in your fingers, a wobble of your wrist.  
It's nothing, you would tell yourself, just tiredness. And I can't waste this perfectly good whiskey, can I?  
And your grip would be steadied and that odd, faintly anxious feeling would fade. Your heart wouldn't buzz and thrum as though trapped. You could pad softly into the bedroom after brushing your teeth ("Stop coming to bed with booze breath, it's bloody horrible"), and slip into the sheets as gently as possible, nuzzling into her neck as though you'd been there all night.  
Of course, she's a clever woman. One who knows what time she fell asleep, and where. One who was happy with a glass of merlot with dinner, and then a small brandy as she sat next to you, fingers brushing idly over the fabric of your sleeve while you watched some uninspired crime drama on ITV. And she would always tolerate your other tried and tested line of "I'm just going to read a chapter of my book, dear." And she would always wake up, whisper "Must have been a long chapter", and that's when you'd say "Must have dozed off."  
Oh God, you miss her. Your face is sticking to the copy of the Radio Times you left lying on the sofa, you suspect that one of your socked feet is dangling in the remains of last nights' attempt at chilli, and you miss her.

The flat you currently live in is situated above a second hand furniture shop. This turned out to be extremely useful; if you were going to have a beaten, scratched faux-leather sofa that could only seat two people, you didn't see the sense in carrying it any further than up some stairs. And, as someone supporting two former wives, you felt a kind of kinship with it.  
Sometimes, you look in the mirror, really closely, and notice that you're starting to look slightly leathery yourself. Faux-leathery, even.  
Next to the shop is an off license, usually staffed by Leah, a dour young woman in her early twenties. She instinctively knows to hand you the usual bottle of what has to be the cheapest, most unpleasant brandy known to be consumed by any human, placing it in a plastic bag along with anything else you've picked up (which is usually anything on offer), all without taking her eyes off the small television in the corner. She never speaks, beyond a vague "seeyuh" as you leave, the bell over the door tinkling in your wake. You've taken that sound to mean that relief is in sight, that your grip will steady and your thoughts will be easier to muddle through in mere minutes.  
At the end of the street is a pub. You went there for the first week or so of living here before realising that drinking alone was actually less depressing. The Hourglass is tiny, dark, and furnished almost exclusively with scuffed stools lined up around the bar. There was a table, until Mick fell through it, explained a man with a long, grey face. Derek, you think his name was. Derek, despite having known Mick for years, never delved into his life outside of The Hourglass and its comforting darkness.  
"Funny thing, that." Derek burped into his fist. "Spent bloody years drinking with that bloke. Haven't spoken to him since he got barred for breaking the table. Maureen reckons he's dead, isn't that right, Maureen?"  
Maureen looked up from the crossword, pen twirling idly in knotted old fingers. "You saw the state of him. Skin the colour of piss, if he weren't dead that night, he will be by now."  
"Isn't there someone you could check with?" you found yourself blurting out, not even out of concern for this stranger's wellbeing, but some kind of despair, a need to know that you could never be like this man whose possible death prompted no concern whatsoever.  
A sweaty man with a missing tooth laughed from his place at the bar. "Yeah, let's ask his wife. Sure she'll know."  
"Has anyone done that?"  
"Course not. She fucked off years ago, after their lad moved to Australia."  
You managed two subsequent identical nights in The Hourglass, accepting twos on Derek's unpleasantly damp rollies ("No filters for me, I'm not a fucking toddler") and helping Maureen with her crossword. On the second day, a smartly-dressed woman, couldn't be more than about thirty, opened the door, glanced around at all the sad, worn faces, and evidently thought better of it, leaving with a barely disguised grimace. You couldn't blame her. You considered bolting after her, begging her to take you with her. I'm not like them, you wanted to scream, I'm not like them, with their sad, croaking, mirthless laughs and empty smiles and ghastly breath. My life isn't over, I have potential, I've been so much better.  
You didn't. You drank more. You cried at one point, forced people at the bar to look at photos of your daughter. They must be so out of date, you mumbled, trying to figure out how old Hannah must be by now. Still in months, rather than years, surely? Babbling semi-coherently on the phone months old. Painful to think about how big she must be getting years and distance months old. Derek rolled his eyes.  
"Gin'll do that."  
You didn't go back to The Hourglass after that.

You sometimes can't tell if your medical school experience is a blessing or a curse, although that could arguably rest on which side of you is fighting.  
You know the signs to look out for, as if you couldn't already tell that what was A Habit is now very much A Problem, and soon to be A Death Sentence. You know where should hurt, and why. You know the symptoms of withdrawal, and you know about cirrhosis and jaundice. That, in fact, is precisely why you're opening the curtains for the first time in what must be two weeks, dust spinning in the impossibly bright light that illuminates your life now, a twinkling metropolis of empty bottles. You survey your kingdom for a moment. Nothing a quick clean couldn't fix. You've got Hannah next week, you'll need to get all this rubbish out of here anyway. She's never visited your flat before.  
Squinting into the light, you raise your small shaving mirror to your face.  
God, you look old.  
Then, so does everyone under harsh light. You'll look better after a shower, whenever you decide to take one. Ageing isn't what you are looking for.  
You conclude that no, the whites of your eyes are not yellow, merely bloodshot. It's the lighting in this place. The off-white of the walls. It would make anything look at least slightly yellow-ish, which would explain your skin. A word springs to mind; sallow. That's the one.  
The steady thrum of pain in that one area, that one key area, is nothing. You coughed a lot yesterday. Probably pulled something. Anyone can tell that. You should really get the damp sorted out.  
Your hands are trembling, but that's to be expected. You set the shaving mirror down, and it falls onto its side with a clatter. It's not that you haven't had a drink yet (save for the dregs of what you dozed off with last night), it's just that you're anxious. Anxious to see Hannah, still getting over a divorce, overwhelmed with all the things you have to do.  
What scares you, sometimes, when you wake up in the morning (afternoon, evening, God knows what time but it feels like plagues of locusts writhe beneath your skin), is not that you can justify this to yourself, or even the cold knowledge that it will end you. It's that even the part of yourself you're trying to persuade doesn't care anymore. You can come up with a counter argument to almost every ill you suffer as a result of A Habit (Problem) and you needn't even bother.


End file.
